Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/352

 340 CHAELES MERCIER: ponds not with the nature of the action, but with its degree. A small increase of warmth or coldness is not necessarily either pleasurable or painful. When the degree of change becomes considerable, some degree of pleasure or pain com- monly accompanies it. When the change is great there is always pain. The same is true of pressure, of light, and of sound. A small degree of either of these actions is not necessarily either pleasurable or painful. A great increase in the amount of any of these actions is always painful. But in the feelings now to be considered, termed Emotions, the plea- surable or painful quality is not dependent upon the amount of the action, for direct action there is none. The quality of the feeling depends upon an attribute of the circumstance with which the feeling corresponds ; and when this attribute is present, however trifling the amount of the feeling, it has a definite quality. When the circumstance is noxious, the corresponding feeling is painful. When the circumstance is beneficent the feeling is pleasurable. It is evident, there- fore, that the quality of the circumstance supplies us with a means of dividing into subordinate groups the present class of feelings. Previous, however, to this classification ac- cording to the quality of the circumstance, a more important division has to be made depending on its nature. The circumstance in the environment which elicits the feeling may be either a state or a process either an agent or an event, and the feelings aroused exhibit a corresponding variation. TABLE II. CLASS I. Sub-class I. Order II. Self-conservative Environmentally-initiated Emotions. an Agent in the The feeling corresponds with the re- { lationtothe organism of actively noxious Antagonistic Feelings. lt; passively noxioxis Feelings of Repugnance. beneficent Kindly Feelings. which is cog- nised as an Event in the f environment j noxious Grievous Feelings, which is cog- j beneficent Joyous Feelings, nised as The Antagonistic feelings and the feelings of Repugnance, which have a close affinity, might be grouped together under the name of Antipathetic feelings. The first of the five groups thus arrived at is the large and important genus of Antagonistic feelings. The feelings belonging to this genus are more numerous, more strongly and distinctly characterised, than those of any other group